Paul George leads Clippers to big comeback win over Cavaliers
Broderick Turner April 7, 2024
The coach said his team is still fighting for something even as the regular season is winding down for the Clippers.
It took falling
behindgetting down
by 26 points for the Clippers to finally show the fight coach Tyronn Lue expected from his team that was facing a Cleveland Cavaliers team playing a back-to-back game and playing without All-Star Donovan Mitchell (left knee injury management).
Paul George delivered the big blows for the Clippers,
his scoring
23 in the fourth
quarterbig blows . His
jumper with 7.1 seconds
were
the final points of the game, and his block of a Darius Garland shot the
final
knockout punch that sent the Clippers to a thrilling 120-118 win over the Cavaliers
on
Sunday
afternoon
at Crypto.com Arena.
George
had finished with
39 points, 11 rebounds and seven assists in 44 minutes to help the Clippers produce their third-largest comeback win in franchise history.
The Clippers showed no fight early in the game when they surrendered 80 points in the first half.
As a result, they trailed by 21 at the intermission.
The Clippers played little defense in the first half and were sloppy with the basketball.
They looked uninspired to be playing an afternoon game and nothing like a team that
still
is
still
fighting for seeding in the uber-tough Western Conference.
The Clippers indifference to playing
any
defense in the first 24 minutes led to the Cavaliers shooting 60.4% from the field and 50% from three-point range.
The Clippers inability to take care of the basketball in the first 24 minutes led to 11 turnovers that the Cavaliers turned into 17 points.
The Clippers are
currently
the fourth-seeded team in the West and want to secure that position so they can have home-court advantage in the first round of the playoffs.
With that in mind, Lue said he was not inclined
just
yet to rest his players as the season nears its conclusion.
Kawhi Leonard did miss his third consecutive game because of a sore knee.
I don’t see that right now, Lue said. I mean, we’re still fighting for that four seed. So, until we are able to clinch that and we understand that we have a chance to clinch it or we don’t have a chance to clinch it. But right now our focus is on just playing better basketball, continue to keep getting better and ending up the best we can as far as seeding.
The Clippers have four regular-season games left, the set of back-to-back games at Phoenix on Tuesday and here Wednesday against the Suns the most challenging.
Los Angeles finishes the season with home games against the Utah Jazz and Houston Rockets next weekend.
